Northwest China's Qinghai Province has announced it is allocating more than 1.4 billion yuan (around US$173 million) in the coming five years to improve minority education.

 

The funds will be spent in improving the nine-year compulsory education, senior high school education and vocational education in the autonomous ethnic prefectures of Haibei, Hainan, Huangnan, Guoluo, Yushu and Haixi, said Qinghai Provincial Education Bureau.

 

The province also plans to build and enlarge 120 boarding schools in the six prefectures from the year 2007 and to provide subsidies to poor ethnic minority students there who study in vocational schools, senior high schools and colleges.

 

Meanwhile, Qinghai pledges to train 7,000 primary and middle school teachers and build 700 laboratories, language labs and library rooms in the schools in the ethnic minority prefectures.

 

Amid other efforts, Qinghai also pledges to cut its illiterate rate among young adults to less than five percent and to provide more than 95 percent of its school-age children with access to compulsory education.

 

(Xinhua News Agency February 25, 2006)